Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

The Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory

First, it’s really not a factory. It’s more like a cluster of trees on the
slopes of Hualalai (which is unpronounceable in Mitchspeak). Secondly, the factory is more like a super-clean
shed. According to the owner of the
place, the technician that flew to Hawaii from Italy to set-up a centrifuge
machine said, upon seeing the place (while drinking beer for breakfast), “That, is not
a factory.”

Another thing; chocolate is not as easy to make as you
might think. At Original Hawaiian
Chocolate, they start with fruit from the trees and process all the way through
to finished bars of fine chocolate. This process obviously involves growing the cacao
trees, which are finicky about where they grow.
Starting at four years of age, the smallish tropical trees will produce fruit
on their trunks. This must occur within
a nine-day window. The beans from which chocolate
is produced is grown inside a placenta within the fruit.

Following the harvest of the fruit, the fruits are cut
open to reveal the placenta and beans.
This entire mess must be fermented to remove the placenta and flavor the
beans. The exposed beans are then dried
in the sun for twenty-two days. After
drying, the thin shell is removed from the chocolate “nib” inside. This is done mechanically in a tumbler. The shells are vacuumed away.

We are close to chocolate bars now.

To finally reach the chocolate bar, the nibs are processed
with heat and stirring. A bunch of sugar
is added—those of you squeamish about that sort of thing likely don’t want to
know how much. The processed chocolate
is then pumped away and poured into chocolate goodies.

You can purchase goodies at the gift shop!

Posted is a photo of the cacao fruits, a gecko lizard
licking at the placenta from a freshly opened fruit, and (just because I can)
last night’s sunset from where we are staying on the island.